Well, it’s true that Occam didn’t invent the term Occam’s Razor…but he heavily influenced it (obviously since it’s named after him). Did you click on the names of the others associated with the term btw? Many (most) were also theists…so the main point is still valid.
-XT
The irony is that all of the great art and philosophes everyone speaks of are inspired by a religion, but all of the violence is because of the hatred thereof. It seems almost inevitable that a peaceful religious society will eventually be attacked by someone who hates them for their religion.
So I would attribute all of the hatred, anger, and violence to the bizarre human fear of those who are different. Religion may be one of the differences, but the same could be said of skin color.
Well, he didn’t name it after himself. Obviously the ‘idea’ that we know of as “Occam’s Razor”, was used and developed by him. Unless of course you think that those who named it after him just picked some random nonce from history and gave him credit. If you’ll also note, that I put links to some of the people that xtisme credits in there as being contributers like Thomas Aquinas. I didn’t use Alhacen, or Maimonides in there because I didn’t include anything that happened outside of ‘Christendom’, as we were discussing the ‘Dark Ages’, which is irrelevant outside of Europe. So clearly Ockham had some hand in the creation of the ‘razor’, even if he didn’t choose to name the method after himself.
I don’t believe in singular causes. They are processes. Which is why I made my post about broad historical sweeps. I know you’re a big fan of finding some nitpick in my posts, some screw I didn’t tighten, but you don’t address the actual meat of the argument, as xtisme showed. The point is that intellectual development didn’t just skip the Catholic era, nor was it consigned to the dusty hovels of secretive alchemists. (Who usually are discredited by the same people who would discredit priests.) Ultimately it’s funny that when a certain sort views European history, they like to discredit every category of intellectual from actually contributing to scientific advancement.
The basic point still stands. It’s simply incorrect to say that the church and religion stood in the way of intellectual progress. I’ll be sure to say ‘was named after Ockham because of the method he used in the work he did’, rather than ‘created by’, in the future. Thank you for helping my tighten up my rhetoric. 
I can always be sure to count on you to make a huge point of a typo or sloppy rhetoric, and keep me on my toes.
But, as I said the point still stands. In the Middle-Ages most of the scientific work was being done by Priests, Monks and Alchemists.
I disagree. I have indeed examined the evidence in favor of particular religions and religion in general and found it wanting.
I see. I didn’t mean that you hadn’t examined any evidence. There’s a difference between looking at some evidence and the {all available} evidence. The latter seems unlikely. Since you said “we can’t know” and used the term “I feel” and “my gut feeling” I’m thinking it’s an opinion based on an emotionally skewed view.
It’s something we find in virtually everyone.
I’m out of this discussion now. Just chalk my vote up in the “religion as net bad thing” category.
Mostly right (at least for Christian Europe) - but you must acknowledge that this was largely because the Church controlled education too. That it doesn’t say anything about who might have done the work, if laypeople had the same opportunities as Church people. Look at what a layperson like Leonardo achieved, or Galileo.
You only need to look at the state of the art in the Islamic world or China to see that other contemporaneous systems were actually stronger at new developments, even while the work was done by non-clerical people (yes, religious followers, but who wasn’t?) So the argument that without Church conservatism, Europe may have been more advanced than it was, still holds water, IMO.
Well, I am not so certain that Islam is a good example. Islam was more advanced for the first half of the Middle-Ages but was quickly outpaced during the second half, and never caught up.
For me I see it as a difficult sell simply because the loss of civil infrastructure that comes with the collapse of an empire is a pretty significant event. This isn’t to say that you are entirely without a point, the Catholic church was not saint (pardon the pun) and did work to excercise a monopoly on intellectual pursuits. However, I think there is something to be said that the collapse of the Roman Empire would have contributed greatly to the demise of such intellectual traditions. That we can look at it both ways that the Catholic church was a monopoly, but also that in the early stages, to its credit, the Catholic church was the institution keeping civilization alive as Europe devolved into feudalism.
Comparing it to Islam on the other hand, well, Islam is a religion too. Though, I think it can be argued that historically Islam has been far more anti-reason than Catholicism. Scientific advancement in Islam has largely been the purview of the Persians, and the Jews. Arabs have long been a warrior-poet tribe. Later in the Middle-ages the Arab rulers became more antagonistic to science as I understand it. (No cites, I am not that familiar with the subject matter, though it is easy to verify that most of the Muslim luminaries were Persian.) If the Catholic church were to be entirely antagonistic, then how was the ground laid for the rennaisance and the enlightenment by a medieval Church that was at the height of its power? All this while Islamic science steadily declined during the same period.
Your example of China is probably apt, but it is beyond the scope of my limited knowledge.
Meanwhile, China, Europe and The Muslim Middle-East can be argued to all have been more advanced than the Americas and Africa during the same period.
No, it hasn’t. Religion is about splitting people up, not bringing them together. It is about splitting people into factions of believers, unbelievers, heretics and faithful. It is about creating differences between people that would not exist without religion, and promoting insane hatred between those factions. Society has cohered in spite of religion, not because of it.
As for why religion is so near universal ? Corruption, rape and genocide. Millennia of the believers killing unbelievers, except the young women who are kept as sex slaves and raped. Just as recommended in the Bible. Spreading the genes of believers, eliminating the genes of unbelievers. Until now, we are a species that has selectively bred itself into a species prone to intolerance, amorality, insanity, hatred and despair; the fundamental building blocks of religion.
And as societies become large and prosperous enough, they can and will develop forms of corruption characteristic of that level of development; like mass slavery and ever-stronger religions. A less developed society won’t, because they can’t survive such parasites.
Skin color doesn’t demand blind hatred; religion does. Skin color doesn’t excuse blind hatred; religion does. Skin color doesn’t manufacture differences; religion does ( in a town full of same colored people, random people will not suddenly turn a different color; religion does declare people to be objects of hate ).
Because ALL religion is blind faith. There is no other kind of religion. Magically eliminate blind faith from humanity, and religion vanishes overnight, because there is absolutely no other reason to buy a word of it BUT blind faith.
But in a leaky bucket.
Ah. I see. Thank you so much for enlightening me regarding my complete unawareness of my life situation and my inability to reason for myself.
So much inaccuracy, so few words. Religion isn’t about splitting people up, especially the early religions…but instead about bringing them together. Every early culture, society, civilization was formed around the core of it’s religious belief. Perhaps you think that having clans, tribes, settlements, cities, kingdoms, empires, etc was a bad thing…but I seriously don’t see how you can say it with a straight face. And yet none of those things would have been possible at that stage in our development without religion to act as a central idea bringing people together.
As for religion being all about ‘splitting people into factions of believers, unbelievers, heretics and faithful’, while this has some truth to it, it says more about people than religion. PEOPLE split groups of humans into Them and Us…usually with the conotations that the ‘Them’ part is a bad thing. Religion simply allows for greater organization, stability and larger groupings of ‘Us’.
What evidence do you have that ‘Society has cohered in spite of religion, not because of it’? Can you give some historical examples of societies cohering without religion at all? Because if society had to struggle with religion to emerge it would be logical that societies who didn’t have such a struggle would have had a distinct advantage. There should be plenty of historical examples for you to show…so show them.
Well, this is just hyperbolic bullshit…and frankly could be said about humans in general. Again, you attempt to put a modern (and highly skewed) viewpoint on what religion is and ignore the fact that religion has been with humanity long before The Bible was thought of. You do nothing to explain WHY religion is universal among early human societies, nor why it propagated when those societies went from simple hunters and gatherers to settled farmers to cities, kingdoms and empires.
And yet, even the smallest societies of humans have some form of religion, and usually some kind of religious structure, be it simply the tribal shaman or wise man/woman. So…it seems you are wrong, unless you want to provide historical examples to back up your assertion.
-XT
I’m thinking of nominating good ole DT for King of Sweeping Inaccurate Generalities. K.O.S.I.G. Although I’m hoping for a better acronym.
Sounds like a thread in the making. 
Protector of the anti-Faith.
I cannot think of a single thing invented by mankind that has been more damaging to mankind than religion.
I can…tools.
-XT
Bullets,…they’ve been bad too. Lotta damage there
Poison? Swords? Spears? War?
No…religion. :rolleyes:
More than just that. For example, many of the great early scientists (or “natural philosophers,” as they were known back them) were motivated by a desire to unravel the majesty of God’s creation. Sir Isaac Newton was famous for this, as was Johannes Kepler.
How about leading Communists in history (who, among other things, attempted to stamp out religion)?